10 thoughts on “TBT: Little Gloria (Vanderbilt) … Happy at Last (1982)

  1. I read the book by Barbara Goldsmith when it came out. I highly recommend it, it’s fascinating, especially that Big Gloria’s twin sister Thelma was the mistress of the Prince of Wales before Wallis Simpson. In fact, she’s the one who told Wallis to look after the little man while she swanned off to America, I think during the custody battle. Also, Big Gloria may have had an affair with the Russian Marchioness of Milford Haven who also happened to be Prince Philip’s aunt by marriage.

  2. That lace hat with the folded up brim reminds me of the 1990s. Never thought I’d see one in a 1982 film.

  3. I remember liking this when it first aired. Wouldn’t mind seeing again now that I appreciate costuming more.

  4. I also read the book when it came out. And I wondered how the biopic/miniseries would deal with the lesbianism. Looks like from the costume angle, it’s worth a re-watch.

    Just cannot get over the fact that Gertrude Whitney’s several affairs were considered okay for a Guardian and a presumed lesbian affair wasn’t. Patriarchy strikes back with the double standard.

    BTW, I’m reading a Biography, Madame Fourcade’s Secret War, it’s about Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, who ran and was the boss of one of France’s most important Resistance organizations. Now this would make a good film/miniseries.

    1. Both women’s reputations were attacked. It’s difficult to know what charges had any truth behind them.

  5. Sondheim’s “Send In The Clowns” was written for Glynis Johns. You have to listen to her version, it’s the best ever.
    Gloria was the mother of Anderson Cooper of CNN, and he was very broken up by her death. She sounded like a helluva woman.

    1. Let us not forget Glynis Johns in Mary Poppins. No one else could have sung “Sister Suffragette” in quite the same way.

  6. The Morgan’s were not nouveau riche, as they lacked the riche. What they were was successful social climbers armed with three beautiful daughters who married well, usually more than once. Gloria Morgan seems to have been the best picker of the lot.
    Laura Morgan by all accounts started the whole shemozzel as seems to have been mentally ill.
    Sadly Gloria Morgan’s chief interest in her daughter seems to have been monetary, to be fair she had no other source of income, and she certainly never meant the child any harm.
    The last thing Gertrude Whitney wanted was to take. responsibiliyr for a child but she was convinced by Laura that her dead brother’s only daughter was in imminent danger of her life and she had to intervene.
    It took young Gloria decades to recover from the damage caused by all this.

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